New park program celebrates winter solstice

Wednesday

Dec 26, 2012 at 12:01 AMDec 28, 2012 at 10:24 PM

Nearly two dozen hearty souls donned coats, hats, gloves, and even some blankets to come to the beach at Washington Oaks Gardens State Park last Friday to catch some special rays — the winter solstice sunrise.

MARK ESTESCORRESPONDENT

Nearly two dozen hearty souls donned coats, hats, gloves, and even some blankets to come to the beach at Washington Oaks Gardens State Park last Friday to catch some special rays — the winter solstice sunrise. It was also the occasion of the inaugural Winter Solstice program by Park Service Specialist Joe Woodbury.

The winter solstice is the shortest day of each year in the Northern Hemisphere, and the sun rises at its southernmost point along the horizon.

Arrivals were greeted at the bottom of the dune walkover next to the parking lot with coffee and hot chocolate on a table with several oranges to symbolize the sun.

The gusty wind encouraged a slight change in venue as everyone moved from the top of the walkover to the beach to shelter.

"It's a great time of year — Christmas is coming, Hanukkah is in full swing — pretty soon it will be 2013," Woodbury said in introduction. "Two thousand years of Western technology is great, but for thousands of years we lived without all that stuff and it's only recently that we've come to a different sense of time. Our time now is linear time, as shown by a digital clock. In the past, time was more cyclical — with times of rest and wakefulness. Machines don't rest and a lot of people work and then go home and there's a computer and everything they did at work they can do at home. So it's tempting never to have a time of repose."

For Woodbury, slow time, or seasonal time, is an alternative to linear time.

"You could use the path of the sun and the seasons year-long to get back in touch with nature," he said. "The sun is in the southern part of the sky. If you look up at noon, the sun will be almost shockingly low in the sky, and we're at a relatively low latitude. Can you imagine what it's like in Norway now? The sun is not going to get very far above the horizon."

Woodbury continued that in coming days, the sun will rise a few increments farther north each day. At the Spring equinox in March, it will rise over the equator. By the summer solstice it will rise at its northernmost point, only to start back south again to continue the cycle. The year can be divided so that each has eight equidistant points on a circle, with the two solstices and two equinoxes as well as the mid-points between them.

"You could use these as days of celebration; no matter what your tradition is, holidays are clustered around these times because they were such important dates," Woodbury said. "If you didn't follow the sun across the sky with the seasons, you wouldn't know when to plant. We have eight stations and eight reasons to celebrate throughout the year."

Christmas and Hanukkah, as well as older holidays such as Roman Saturnalia, are clustered around the winter solstice. Feb. 2, is now known as Groundhog Day, but in the old Celtic calendar it was the first day of Spring. Then comes our first day of Spring, the vernal equinox around March 21.

The next quarter day according to Woodbury is May Day, on May 1, followed by the summer solstice. The following quarter day is Aug. 1.

"This is the one where I couldn't really find any familiar holidays," Woodbury said. "It's called Loafmas. On Aug. 1, it's grain harvest time so you could harvest the wheat or whatever you're growing and make food out of that and have a big feast." The first day of Fall is the autumnal equinox about Sept. 1, followed by the holiday dates of Oct. 31 and Nov. 1.

"Why do so many holidays cluster around this — All Saints Day, the Day of the Dead, Halloween," Woodbury said. "On the old calendar it's the first day of winter. Early on people began to think that when seasons changed on that date time is just a little bit entwined, so it could be a time of danger, in a fun way. For example, June 21, in the old calendar that was Midsummer. Have you ever heard of Midsummer's Eve, where you don't go into the woods in the evening because that's when elves and the fairies would be coming out?"

Woodbury said that these could also be times when the usual order of things reversed and offered the tradition of kissing under the mistletoe as an example.

"If you're at a party, it's not acceptable to just go up to anybody and kiss them. But, around the Winter Solstice there's this magical plant called mistletoe," Woodbury said.

He then raised a stick with mistletoe hanging on the end over the heads of Alicia Bailey and Lance Medelle, who obliged him by kissing each other to the delight of the crowd.

"Who would ever kiss during a park program?" Woodbury asked. "But under the mistletoe, it's all right."

The kiss wasn't a first for Bailey and Medelle; they are engaged.

"We saw they were having a celebration, we thought it would be a great way to start the day," Bailey said. "I'm glad we got up early. We don't usually see sunrises over the ocean because we live in Tampa."

At this point the sun made its entrance and the lecture ended with everyone feeling a new warmth on their faces.